Mudge

Yep, I dont like hydraulic if I can avoid it. Since these cars come without them for the most part, stick to it IMO.

Pretty wise advice, not much real gains unless the casting is piss poor, but its safe. Do NOT polish the intake tract, exaust sure but intake no. Taking material off is where it gets iffy, bowl work is the safest for rookies. Polishing the combustion chamber also a plus, if you can do it without removing material.

At the bottom of the timing cover, if the left and right side look identical its an early LT4. If its MAF its 94 or 95. If there is a bulge in the "right" hand side of the timing cover (left when facing it) then its a 96+, this is a crank position sensor.

First things to do are replace fluids, check wear and maintenance items. Performance parts costs money, but you can do anything to it that you can do to another car, head work, cam, headers, exaust, ignition, etc

IMO, it would require months of study for most people before hand, because many people do work the wrong areas and in the wrong amounts. Ooh, whats this short side radius in the exaust port, I can cut this sucker down and get LOTS of flow! Your best bet is to make a cast of each port, and analyze it, make a cutout, and follow it. Read books before you do this though.

I agree with both points, I'd almost question what your estrogen levels are As MUCH as Sandra and I get along GREAT and can talk about almost anything, there are just some things that women seem to react to, so you just have to be on carefull footing. Kind of sucks, I was raised to be pretty darn open minded and can talk about pretty much anything without getting pissy. You will have to feel things out on your own. When I was down during the breakup though, or even what you can do now, best thing for me was to KEEP BUSY doing what I liked to do. Not spending time pondering things that were too painfull to deal with at the time. Listen to some pounding music that gets your psyche going, and just do stuff to keep busy, productive stuff

Lots of wisdom and experience here... You will always remember the first, kind of like a peice of you may be gone after that but the wound heals up, even though you may still have a scar from it. You are young, and it really takes a good long while before you know your going to be with someone awhile. If you two got "sick of each other", then something was not right or there was some kind of stress on the situation there. There is also alot of wisdom in simply keeping young Willy in your pants, or staying protected, for many reasons - yourself and others. We all live and learn, and there are many things that you will reflect upon from time to time.

I think its kind of normal, you win some you lose some, in all aspects of life. I lost one too about 5 years ago, took me about 11 months to really move on, pretty damn long time. I just wasn't ready and my immaturity hurt a good thing, stupid me in this case, not quite the same as yours but same outcome. Anyhow, even though sometimes some things dont seem the same, I've been with the same person now for 3.5 years, and she is just about every kind of perfect I could hope for. Of course she is still a woman so she isn't 100% perfect but things are great. All you can really do is look back once in awhile hopefully with a smile, remember the good times, but hey it just didn't work out, and there must be a reason for that. I prefer to just leave it at that because if you try to figure it out you will just go nuts, and still not figure it out, and you have a new life now to work on - not the past. Whats done is done, leave it that way. Your still young (as am I), I'm going on 27 and the woman is going on 29.

Definately spend time studying before you do it, but with your scrap head it sounds like thats what your doing.

If you take a pic of the timing cover I can tell you if its early or late LT1.

If you are ordering new GM parts, I know a guy in FLA who knows his stuff, and has excellent pricing.

Oh yes, thats true, there are rebuild kids for those but I'm not sure how easy it would be to find one for an old Z.

This is why I would not start with an L98 The LT1 is a nice middle of the road between the 80s Chevy V8s and the LS1/6, which is still too expensive for me.

It would be nice to know if that was RPM or what, because past 7k the stock PCM basically wont run, there are always reports of ringers doing 7100/7200 but who knows.

Its been done, I think www.lt1intake.com is the site, may be costly though. Basically they just machine the rear of the intake for the distributor, I dont think there is anything complex other than the accuracy. The LT1 heads have also been used on SBC before, and SBC heads been moved to LT1, with machine work of course in both cases.

Or, simply look at revolutions per mile of the tire and compare it to the old, or the diameter

Thanks for that LONG post Grump

I have not yet heard a good case for a high volume pump, ever. In fact like your friend I have heard nothing but "stay away" about these pumps. If you have a hyd cam then stick with a standard or high pressure pump, most of them are high enough and flow quite handily enough. If you go solid you actually will often find restrictors keeping less flow to the top. I would get a standard high quality pump.

I have the early 5 speed and it is a short throw already IMO. I will have to look into the bushings.

Either a vacuum leak, or your brakes need bleeding, how is the fluid level?

Tons of REALLY bad parodies. Here is the real deal http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=20935

"You want me to do things to you like the sun, and the moon..... idiot"

The costs incurred to build an L98 or 305 etc to LT1 or LS1 levels just doesn't seem worth it to me. If you start with one of those engines I'd plan to keep it nearly stock, otherwise you put money into maxing it out and then having no more real potential for the future, and probably not steller gas mileage either (depending on your cam selection etc). Thats one reason I dropped the L98 as an idea, despite how cheap it is to obtain with the 5 speed. But, they make torque like nobodys business. I know a local guy who open road races his 422 L98 stroker, at 4,000 RPM.

http://www.rit.edu/~jts0422/Movies/Group_X_video.swf These are the guys that did the Mario Twins, you can save the file and open with IE if you want to save it.

Thats neat, I didn't know it existed